Beams and Motes: The problem of repeated failure to live by our basic assumptions

By Domenico Fetti

I was reflecting on Owen Barfield's shorthand term of RUP, meaning Residual Unresolved Positivism, by which he pointed out that those who accurately diagnose the spiritual malaise of modernity nonetheless continue to live-by positivistic, materialistic, reductionist, scientistic assumptions - and this comes-through again and again in the person's thinking, writing and actions.

One example Barfield gave was Jung, who said and wrote many contradictory things - Barfield diagnosed the root of this problem as partly the persistence of many positivistic features of which Jung seemed unaware; plus Jung's compromising wish to communicate-with and be-valued-by a positivistic world.

We need to be aware of such matters - because the thinking, writing and doing of most writers and philosophers of the modern condition is likewise compromised - and we need to avoid being misled by this. To avoid absorbing their confusion and errors, we need to distinguish the points where other-people are failing to live consistently by their most considered assumptions.

In a nutshell - with RUP there is a significant gap between the metaphysical assumptions we wish to hold; and the metaphysical assumptions that we have unconsciously absorbed from socialisation and propaganda. Our new and improved metaphysics may simply be an aspiration; our true belief (that which we live by )   

However, the mote in the eye of another is easier for us to acknowledge than the beam in our own eye; and all of us who are trying to move beyond alienation and materialism into Final Participation are only-partially successful (at best). Most of our thinking is not primary, but automatic; and our alienation is often relieved (temporarily) merely by lapsing into the passivity and unconsciousness of Original Participation rather than actively, consciously, thinkingly moving-forward.

The answer is not to aspire to eliminate 'positivism' - because that is not possible - but to learn from the RUP problems of others to diagnose, to notice and acknowledge, our own inevitable, frequent deficiencies.

In other words - we should probably not be aiming to attain perfection of Final Participation as a powerful and permanent state - since this is (at present, for us) impossible; as to recognise and repent our own failures to do this.

This is, indeed, the core Christian response to our own weakness and corruptibility.

A Man's mortal life is trial, error and repentance - with repentance the worst sins are washed away, without repentance the slightest lapse or deficiency may be enough to damn us by a pride-full insistence that we have not erred: thereby such error becomes built-into our self-understanding. 

The demotivating effect of Residual Unresolved Positivism (RUP) - and the instant cure!

Owen Barfield invented the term Residual Unresolved Positivism (RUP) to refer to a Positivist attitude which persisted unconsciously, unknown, and against the will of the person who held to it.

Positivism is the (usually implicit) belief system that all valid knowledge comes via the senses (and not, for example, from revelation or imagination) - it is sometimes called Scientism, and is the metaphysics which is mainstream in modernity - although usually only articulated by scientists with a bent for philosophy.

RUP can have a life-sapping effect - a demotivating effect - an alienating effect - the effect of draining meaning from life; and I experienced this myself over the past week and a bit during which I have been trying to finish a big theoretical paper on the subject of Group Selection in Biology (from the perspective of Systems Theory) - and when I have experienced a cumulative inner resistance, a dysphoric sense of boredom, futility and angst about the project. Yesterday I got to the point when I was unable and unwilling to proceed, and resolved to abandon the project for a while.

 Today I cracked-open a newly purchased book - History, Guilt and Habit, by Owen Barfield, and read a couple of pages of the chapter on Evolution. Suddenly it became clear that I was suffering from the effects of Residual Unresolved Positivism - and I immediately felt cured: I also felt motivated, enthused and excited.

Until that exact moment, I had been wondering whether I was actually physically ill, with some subclinical infection or autoimmune disease or something - so profound was my demotivation. I felt that I ought to be getting on with the group selection paper, I couldn't; but I couldn't get myself to do anything else, because I felt I ought to be working on the paper...

The problem was quite simple. Because I was writing the paper for a biological audience, I was constrained by staying within the biological paradigm - which lies within positivism, and strictly excludes any religious or even metaphysical material.

(It would, in any case, be utterly self-defeating if it was included - since 99% (approximately!) of biologists are actively atheist, and would instantly write off anything even hinting at Christian assumptions.) 

As always, when I am working on theoretical science, I was intensely absorbed in thinking about group selection, and indeed had been for some weeks. By this I mean devoting a level of sustained and recurrent time and effort to thinking about the problem, to a degree which most people have never done on any subject - because this is what is required for theoretical endeavour.

[For instance, I had been thinking on and off, and hard, about the nature of depression for about fifteen years before I made a breakthrough in 1999. Of course there is reading, observation and conversation (also sometimes experimenting) - as well as thinking. But for genuine theoretical work, the proportion of thinking to empirical input is several-fold in favour of just-thinking. Since thinking (and even reading!) does not count as an academic, scholarly or scientific activity (if an academic was to say they had been 'thinking a lot' recently, they certainly would be regarded as making a feeble excuse for doing nothing at all; this goes some way towards explaining the dire state of modern intellectual discourse.]

However, this focused intensity on Group Selection meant that I was trapping myself - for long intense, recurrent periods - inside the positivistic biological world view.

I was trapping myself therefore inside a world without meaning and purpose  - a dead world without God.

And it was this which was cumulatively demotivating me - because it removed all genuine significance from my task (which by default just became a matter of ego, careerism and the like). 

It just took attention to those few words from Owen Barfield to remind me of what was real and matters... and I was free!


(But modernity is implicitly and pervasively positivist; and most modern people never do acknowledge the falsity of positivism and the metaphysical realities I share with Owen Barfield - so presumably most people remain trapped inside a world of meaninglessness and purposelessness and are motivated only by ego, careerism and short-termist pleasure; without any hope of escape because they do not acknowledge anywhere they could escape-to.)

Joseph Campbell (and CG Jung) and RUP (Residual Unresolved Positivism)

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of… being helped by hidden hands? 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time – namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. 

From The Power of Myth - interviews with Jospeh Campbell by Bill Moyers - book and PBS documentary, 1988.

Owen Barfield described a common phenomenon among spiritual people he named  RUP - Residual Unresolved Positivism. In essence, he meant that such people suppose that they have transcended materialism and become spiritual, but have not really done so. It is the difference between theory and practice, or between explicit belief and implicit habits - in theory they believe that spirit is primary but in practice they continue habitually to depend on materialist metaphysical explanations.

In the passage quoted above, Joseph Campbell reveals a failure to follow-through his beliefs to their conclusions. (I can confirm that this is true of the whole span of his writings, not just this particular passage). He describes how, when a person follows his Bliss (by which he means his deepest inner convictions - get translates the term from a Hindu doctrine of five 'sheaths' of the person - Bliss is the most fundamental sheath)... then Life will arrange-itself around the fulfilment of this need.

Campbell was known as a spiritual writer on the subject of mythology; but his bottom line explanations were derived and adapted from Carl Gustav Jung (e.g Campbell edited a popular anthology The Portable Jung, he attended conferences and met Jung and some of his early books were issued by Jung's publishing house).

For Jung, and for Campbell, spirituality and myth were ultimately a matter of psychology, and psychology was ultimately about human gratification during mortal life. The difference between Jung and other psychologists and psychiatrists is that the mainstream were aimed at therapy (alleviation of pathology) while Jung aimed at positive enhancement of a person's sense of meaning and purpose in Life... however, in the end this meaning-purpose were simply feelings.

For whatever reason, Jung and Campbell both stopped short of a religious metaphysical basis for their beliefs. So, in the passage quoted above, Campbell defensively refers to his belief as a 'superstition' even though he believed it and based his life upon it. He regarded living for Bliss as better than living for money or status, but could not justify this except in terms of making people feel better (overall and in the long term).

Campbell felt that a person living for and from their Bliss would experience meeting important people and having doors-open for their destiny - but presented this as an empirical observation, merely; and did not explain why or how this should happen - why, specifically, 'the world' should arrange-itself (in multiple extremely complex and interacting ways ) to enable a person to follow their Bliss, or destined 'track'...

One of Campbell's problems was a deeply rooted anti-Christianity, in reaction to his upbringing in a very literalistic, exclusive and hard-line (all-or-nothing) Irish Roman Catholicism. Yet if Campbell had responded to Christianity with the depth and flexibility he allowed for other religions, he might have seen that Bliss could coherently be regarded as God-within-us (God immanent). And Campbell might have seen that if indeed Life does arrange itself around the true destiny of an individual human being, then this implies a personal God of great power, who loves each person as an individual and intervenes in the world to help them follow their proper 'track'.

Much the same applies to Jung's concept of synchronicity - which is what Campbell is rephrasing here. If indeed reality arranges for individual people to have 'meaningful coincidences', then it also implies a personal God who is doing the immense job of arranging multiple factors, for the good of specific persons.

In the case of Jung and Campbell, I think we can see that their unresolved positivism is quite extreme - since they lack even a spiritual metaphysics; hence they both end-up making thoroughly materialist and this-worldly analyses and recommendations.

But for those of us who try-to live by a genuinely spiritual and Christian metaphysics, there is still a major problem of RUP - since we live in a world with a materialist and this-worldly metaphysics; and it is this modern world that socialises, trains, educates and entrains our habits of thinking.

In the end and under such circumstances; we all find that a thorough-going, 100-percent spiritual Christianity is impossible; and we can only manage a partial and intermittent consistency between our metaphysics and our habitual thinking.

Our need, then, is to repent our failures; and to take seriously, learn from, and try to amplify our successes at transcending positivism and fully-living-by what we theoretically believe.

 

Where are universal 'inner worlds' such as the 'dwat' or 'collective unconscious' located? - and can we participate in them, as well as observe them?

A question that recurs to me, is how top conceptualize (visualize, imagine) the 'location' of inner world concepts. The ancient Egyptians had a core and vital concept of the 'dwat' or underworld, where lived gods and the dead. Every living being had dealings with the dwat, and indeed it was the ultimate reality. 

Yet it has become very difficult to imagine the reality of something with such properties as the dwat - something which is 'inside' everybody, and yet also everywhere. 

A more recent example is the collective unconscious of Jung; a realm of universal archetypes, which is supposed to be accessed in dream and artistic creation, to be expressed in myth, and to emerge during insanity. 

I found it very difficult to imagine how the collective unconscious was supposed to work - where it was located, how we could get access to it...

Such difficulties are compounded when one wants to add that each of us as individuals are capable to changing the content of the dwat, or the collective unconscious. It is easier to imagine merely observing a kind of diffuse sea of mythic archetypes and gods floating around and doing things - of coming to 'know' the contents of such inner worlds or underworlds. 

But that you or I might potentially alter this collective reality; and to do so my some 'inner' act of ours, such as thinking... well it seems difficult to imagine even how such a thing might work (leaving aside the secondary issue of whether it is possible or plausible). 

I find, when pressing on this problem; that the whole thing has a tendency to become very abstract and detached, and unconvincing to myself. 

My conclusion is that there are very deep and difficult-to-eradicate assumptions in my way of reasoning that block a kind of basic human understanding, which was once widespread. 

For instance, it brings-out the extent to which we moderns almost 'cannot help' imagining our thinking as going-on in our brains and inside our skulls - with no possible way of really interacting with any kind of universal domain.  

It also brings-out the corresponding assumption that thinking is cut-off from the world; so that we cannot imagine our own thinking affecting the world... Except, maybe - in a crude sci-fi sort of way - as something like a 'telepathic beam' of 'thought energy' that affects matter (which we don't believe actually happens, or else it would be detectable and measurable). 

It seems, it feels, 'obvious' that the contents of 'my' thinking is something cut-off from the world; such is the nature of our alienation.

And yet I can recall young childhood when it seemed equally obvious that my thinking could be known to others, and that it could affect the world. For example, fear on my part could attract the attention of bad beings, bad events - and in that sense could make things happen. 

Or my secrets could be 'read' by others - I could not contain them 'inside my head', even when I wished; but they could only remain secret if I was able to 'forget' them.

Thus in early childhood, I naturally understood the way in which all Men (and god/s, spirits, angels, demons, the dead etc) could indeed be both within and also everywhere - albeit I could only envisage this as a passive and one-way process. 

I could not imagine - or believe - that I myself could, by my own thinking, affects this 'collective spiritual underworld'; including affect it for the better. 

I am talking here of the way of thinking variously termed positivism, materialism, scientism or reductionism; and the problematic phenomenon I describe above is what Owen Barfield called RUP - meaning the Residue of Unresolved Positivism which modern Man has as a deeply-ingrained habit; and which is so very difficult to eradicate even among those who - theoretically - fully-recognize the incoherence and evil of positivism. 

It is not too difficult to detect RUP in other people; but a far more difficult/ impossible prospect to eradicate it from our-selves. 

My best guess and hope for doing so is to try and re-discover, learn and extend ways of thinking that correspond to the 'animistic' thinking of ancient history and early childhood - that is, a world populated by intentional, conscious, living Beings - in a web of relationships. To try and translate the positivistic conceptions into these terms. 

But I still tend to 'feel' this in a passive fashion; and have not succeeded in achieving a way of understanding that corresponds to the active and creative engagement of the individual with The World that is Final Participation.    

Although I believe Final Participation is real, and I recognize when it is happening/ has happened; and it is a major aim in my life - it is certainly a disadvantage Not to be able to think-about or conceptualize it in a way that I find both convincing and comprehensible. 

Work yet to do...

Residual Unresolved Leftism: Is The Enemy in the spiritual war difficult, or easy, to discern?

It is a feature of the spiritual war nowadays that The Enemy (i.e. those on the side of Satan, against God) are dispersed in many places, deny any self-definition; and indeed are just part of normal, mainstream 'public opinion' as revealed in officialdom, institutions and the media, 

It is sometimes said that this makes evil difficult to discern - on the assumption that the evil is hidden among the good, in many and changing forms, under many and changing names and deceptive rhetoric...

But the truth is that evil is very easy to discern nowadays; indeed evil has never been easier to discern IF the line dividing good from evil is drawn in the right place. 

The problem that many people have in discerning evil is that they are retaining too much evil in their own assumptions, in their own world view. 

They are (in effect) trying to use a line between good and evil, when that line has been positioned such as to include evil; therefore they find the discernment to be difficult and unsure. 

This is seen, for example, in what Owen Barfield termed RUP - Residual Unresolved Positivism - something to which everyone brought up in The West is prone. 

RUP is a matter of retaining 'materialist', 'scientistic', 'reductionistic' assumptions that were unconsciously absorbed in childhood and adolescence, are invisible to normal introspection, and which have become habitual framers of thinking. 

This happens when we consciously oppose positivism, wish for a fully-spiritual life, yet keep un-consciously falling back into positivistic ways of regarding the world; therefore we sometimes fail to detect (and may end-up supporting) positivism when it is being deployed by the powers of evil. 

Another - just as common and related - problem is RUL - Residual Unresolved Leftism. 

The assumptions of Leftism (e.g. Leftist concepts of equality, social justice, diversity, environmentalism, antiracism, feminism, sexual revolution, the mainstream hedonic utilitarian morality etc) is pervasive in public discourse as background assumptions. 

Very few people in The West are altogether free of these false, tendentious, evil-tending ideas - and Christians, as much as most, often cherish such ideals - or try to do so. 

RUL therefore confuses our discernment of evil; since Leftism has been a major (probably The major) strategy of evil in the modern world. 

Thus there is evil at work in the world and impinging upon our personal lives, yet because some evil in our-selves matches that external evil, we fail to recognize its true nature. 

With RUL, the line has been drawn wrongly; too close to evil - not including all of evil; with some evils left-over on the side of good; so discernment begins to seem difficult, complex... 

We become confused, disorientated, unsure of what to do and what to reject. 

But the difficulties and complexities are an artefact of the line being drawn in the wrong place - due to Residual Unresolved Leftism. If we can identify and repent all of our Leftist assumptions, the task of discernment is revealed as simple - indeed it has probably never been simpler than Now! 

But another difficulty is that when the line between good and evil has been drawn correctly, and discernment is swift and decisive - it will be found that most of the world, and pretty much all of officialdom, major institutions, and the mass media - are on the side of evil. 

It will also be found, more disturbingly, that most people are on the side of evil; which means that most individual persons we encounter will support the side of evil - will be cooperating-with and probably defending/ advocating/ working-for the powers of evil. 

And this applies even in Christian churches and among the leadership of Christian churches; because being on the side of evil is not about one's majority or average beliefs. 

Even one Leftist belief or assumption suffices to corrupt; because (as of 2020) the tendency of institutions and their choice between good and evil sides may be dictated by a single Leftist belief (such as the Litmus Tests). 

This may be disturbing, unfamiliar, and often demoralizing. 

Yet we should remember that with normal Christianity; any single unrepented sin - no matter how 'small' - is sufficient to cause damnation; because we only truly desire Heaven when we are prepared to give-up all sin for it. Heaven is a place without sin; and nobody can enter it who has not repudiated sin. 

Here on earth, something analogous applies to the sins of Leftism. To be on the side of God, persons and institutions must reject the devil and all his works. 

This does not mean any kind of impossibly perfect standard of behaviour - but repentance - which is the correct detection and identification of sin as sin -and the 'in principle' willingness to discard it. 

Perfection of thoughts and values is impossible in this mortal earthly life; but repentance is always and everywhere open to any person or institution. 

Residual Unresolved Leftism is a serious problem because sin is unrecognized, is indeed defended and advocated; and the consequence is that perception of discernment as difficult and uncertain - in a world where in fact evil is more naked and extreme than ever before. 

So, if you are confused, and find evil difficult to discern; look within for those unrepented sins which are probably the source of the problem. 

One great and immediate advantage of eliminating Residual Unresolved Leftism is that we attain clarity about the spiritual war of this world; and can set-to on the task of fighting that war instead of being enmeshed in confusion. 

Such clarity of discernment is liberating, exciting, and motivating! Which is just what most-people most-need in a world such as this. 

In a time of unprecedented spiritual warfare - maybe spiritual causal hypotheses ought to be first-line and primary?

Maybe the most difficult challenge of living as a Romantic Christian is to bridge the gap between theory and practice. 

As Owen Barfield so often explained; by socialization, training and societal practice we all have deeply-ingrained habits of positivism/ materialism/ scientism/ reductionism (termed Residual Unresolved Positivism - RUP). 

Thus - while in theory I am confident that here-and-now, we live in an era of unprecedented spiritual warfare; where the powers of purposive evil are dominant in the world, and are engaged in a vast plan for corrupting the world to desire evil instead of Good - by the inversion of valuations of evil and Good... 

Nonetheless, the pressure of evil propaganda and practices is continuous and unrelenting and much of the time I fail to live-up-to my best understandings. 

As I say, all this I acknowledge in principle; and in principle I recognize that we should therefore be always alert to the spirit  and be aiming to keep the spiritual at the forefront of thinking and experiencing - yet in when it comes to daily functioning, I mostly fall back into going-along with the mainstream materialism/ positivism of explanations and understandings... 

This means that when something bad happens in my environment, or when I feel bad - all-too-often I spontaneously reach for material-causal explanations; and I strongly tend either to regard the spiritual as a secondary explanation (e.g. when material reasons do not suffice), or else I forget and neglect the spirit altogether.

Yet, surely, in 2022 especially, we ought to be considering spiritual explanations first? - and only when they do not seem to apply or suffice, then moving onto material explanations? 

If I am feeling bad in some way - demotivated, fatigued, in some kind of pain or dysphoric state - should I not immediately - and as a first-line - consider that this may be something like a manifestation of evil from myself, or an evil spiritual attack?

Should I not start my making a spiritual hypothesis for life's problems? 

(I mean, instead of jumping to explain my dysphoria or other problem by thinking first of physical or psychological sickness, or some environmental or political factor - or blaming other-people.)

This mini-insight came to me with an immediate power of intuitive conviction; and so far (when I have remembered to implement it!) I have found it to be astonishingly and rapidly effective in alleviating problems. 

As soon as I think something like - "Could this - now - be a spiritual phenomenon, caused by some spiritual problem?" I have sometimes found an instant clarification of spirit. 

This would fit with my (theoretical) conviction that the single most important thing we can do at present is to understand. 

Because that understanding is not merely theoretical but also effectual.

To understand-truly, is to fight the spiritual war; and sometimes to win it. 

Traditionalist Christianity, Biblical inerrancy and their residuum of unresolved positivism

The deep and ineradicable problem with all forms of backward-looking, traditionalist Christianity is explained by Owen Barfield's idea of 'RUP' - the Residue of Unresolved Positivism.

Of course, understanding the full power of this critique depends upon accepting the idea that human consciousness has developed/ evolved; such that throughout Man's history possibilities are closed-off, as other possibilities emerge. Nonetheless the negative critique can be appreciated even without this; if we take into account what is known about the Hunter-Gatherer societies that preceded the agricultural - and if it is acknowledged that the conditions of H-G societies were closer to Man's natural and spontaneous behaviour.

Anyway; the insight is that all agricultural-based - or 'agrarian' - societies are a development from H-G conditions, and contain ways of life that are specific to them - they are an historically-contingent society, as we can now appreciate since we are aware of the H-G societies that preceded them and the post-industrial revolution/ modern societies that replaced them. The Agrarian are 'middle' societies.

It is an historical fact that Christianity emerged and grew in developed-Agrarian societies - and many of its features were (either therefore or contingently) those of such Agrarian societies (and probably-therefore have declined since) - for example Christianity depends on literacy (which was not a feature of H-G societies), sedentary settlement, social-function hierarchy and specialisation - eg. a priesthood, an institutional church... and so on.

Furthermore, Christianity emerged and grew in societies where people were less able to attain direct contact with the 'spirit world' than H-G societies, and less 'animistic' than these societies; but much more spiritual and animistic than modern societies.

To put is another way, the agrarian Christian societies were not as positivistic/ materialistic/ reductionist as modern societies, but far more positivistic than H-G societies.

This Agrarian positivism is evident in - for example - their highly systematised, formal, abstract theology; their dependence on literacy with its requirement for interpretation, memorisation, analysis and synthesis of texts; the existence of specialised systems of law and philosophy - and so on. For instance; any system of Christianity based-upon the textual inerrancy of The Bible (which underpins much 'evangleical' Christianity of the post-industrial modern era) is significantly positivistic.

In other words, all backward-looking traditionalist Christian systems have a great deal of positivism in them - a great deal of materialism; with the consequent distance from the livingness of the world, the experience of the spirit realm and instead the experience of alienation (only sometimes and temporarily overcome in specialised situations such as ritual and prayer).

If it is agreed that we moderns need to get beyond positivism/ materialism, going back to traditionalism, going back to The Bible, just Will Not Work.

We would need to do something more, and different.

The problem of residual abstraction (maths, geometry, physics) in philosophical (and theological) thinking

This is a really, really Big problem! What is more, it affects the very best and most important thinkers and writers in my pantheon of influences for Romantic Christianity - Steiner, Barfield, Arkle...

The problem is that the understandings and explanations of such people are/ remain rooted in abstract phenomena - despite that these are intending to advocate a personal, 'animistic', 'anthropomorphic' metaphysics.


Their basic idea is that reality is a matter of Beings in Relationships... That the ultimate entities are Beings (alive, conscious, purposive) and that what holds things together and provides structure is the relationships of these Beings.

Yet ni advocating a metaphysics of Being and Relations; these authors fall back, again and again, into abstraction; into the use of examples drawn from physics, geometry and mathematics.

eg. Steiner in Philosophy of Freedom develops his argument wholly abstractly, in terms of categories of percept and concept, and his example is the geometrical figure of the triangle.

Barfield uses physics as his primary mode of explanation; the rainbow is his most famous example; and he calls his new way of thinking 'polarity' which he describes relationships between beings in abstract-mathematical-physics ways - using magnetism and electricity as explanations.

Arkle's main book, A Geography of Consciousness, uses geometrical and physics graphs, tables and diagrams to explain his 'system' - despite that he explicitly asserts everything is alive and conscious.


This could be regarded as a prime example of Residual Unresolved Positivism (RUP) as described by Barfield - and the fact that Barfield himself was prone to it (as was his Master, Steiner) shows how difficult it is to shake-off. This difficulty is most apparent in Barfield's most deep and rigorous book - How Coleridge Thought - when the clash of perspectives is the source of greatest difficulty in understanding the argument. Barfield seems unaware of how his abstractly-structured schemes are so fundamentally at-odds-with what he is trying to prove using these schemes. The key term 'polarity' is mathematical and derived from magnetism (later electricty) - and as difficult to understand intuitively as most such ideas are.


The problem is so old that it can seem inevitable - it goes back to the ancient Greeks, who nearly always used (the ancient equivalent of...) physics as the basis of their metaphysics - with principles such as fire or water underlying 'everything'.

Another example is that 'form' is taken as primary (as with Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas) - and 'form' is conceptualised in geometric terms and often using geometrical examples. (A modern instance is Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields.)

Whereas the primary reality is actually A Being, not A Triangle; is a Being's motivation, not a force or principle.

This abstraction then leads on to the problem (the error) of regarding Time as... optional. The delusion that Time can be set aside, redefined etc. When a world is seen as abstract as its reality and bottom line - then Time loses its function; indeed Time becomes a nuisance!

Yet, if the world is of Beings, beings exists In Time, and only In Time. In cross-section, there are no Beings - because in a 'zero' timescale there is no Life, no Consciousness - if Life and Consciousness are primary, then there is and always must be Time...

Thus one error leads on to another,


But what this does show is the need for further work for Romantic Christianity; because Steiner, Barfield, Arkle are all in error by using maths/ geometry and physics as their models and explanations.

There us work to be done to restate their arguments in terms that are coherent with the conclusions of their arguments.

The good news is that - when thus restated - the metaphysics and theology of Romantic Christianity becomes something intuitively understandable by a child; rather than requiring advanced training in the natural sciences. 

  

How we make our 'luck' - individually and socially

Most of us are prone to lament our own 'bad luck' - whether in terms of personal adversities, and/or the the time and place we inhabit. 

A Christian who believes that God is Good, as well as the creator, ought to assume that overall, we get the 'luck' we need.

Yet it feels wrong to attribute to 'everything that happens' to 'the will of God' - because that would put us into a position of passivity, and God into the role of a manipulator rather than a teacher.

So, on the one hand, in a created universe there is no such thing as 'luck', but on the other hand, in this reality made of beings in relationships, all purposes are not those of The Creator. We need to understand other ways by which life works.  

What follows is one of my favourite passages from the work of William Arkle - and one that has had a major influence on my thinking. 

Whenever I return to it, I find myself struck with renewed force at its discerning wisdom.

**

Edited (by me, for brevity and clarity) from 

A Geography of Consciousness by William Arkle, 1974

It is accepted that if we cut off the leg of a live bird, the bird feels pain and distress. But we suppose that if we cut off the branch of a living tree, the tree neither feels anything nor is aware of anything. While it is accepted that the tree is a living ‘thing’, it is not considered a living ‘creature’. 

This is because the tree cannot communicate its distress to us. But the fact may be that we are simply incapable of receiving the tree’s communications. 

Out of the thousands of such  assumptions made about our natural background, many will be quite wrong and a lot more partly wrong. 

We have denied real intelligence to most of the animal world; but species like the dolphin are now found capable of a high degree of intelligence, playfulness and co-operation with man. This has not been recognized before, simply because we had not tried hard enough to develop communications with the dolphin. 

It has been too readily assumed that lack of communication implied lack of consciousness; but never in ourselves, always in what we failed to communicate with. While it is not suggested that we can talk to stones, there is some sort of communication which links us with everything. 

And if the structure of nature is conscious of us, even if we are not properly conscious of it, this structure will express its friendship or hostility - and which will be based upon our attitude to 'the environment'. 

Because we do not get the messages from the background we avoid responsibility for failure to communicate. Therefore, when we suffer from savage storms, we assume that the savagery does not originate from our-selves but from 'nature'. 

[Either storms are meaningless and 'just happen', or] superstitiously, we fear that maybe some God is angry with us... We seldom consider the possibility that we ourselves have upset the structure of the natural background (of which we are an integral part) through the more intangible aspect of our personalities. 

The burden of all this is that a great deal of our ‘luck’ may be caused by the reaction of our background to the quality or attitude of our own consciousness. 

As this is a collective phenomenon in most instances, we may find ourselves conditioned by unpleasant effects which are not the result of our wrong attitudes but of the attitudes of our fellow men. 

This sort of luck or background conditioning falls equally upon the deserving and the undeserving. In sum; this sort of luck is not luck at all, it is the result of our collective behaviour. 

To put it into a few words, it is a rational proposition to say that if we lived more harmoniously with one another as well as with our background of ‘natural phenomena’, then this background would become more harmonious to us. 

Such a good outcome would not be caused by the intervention of God, but as a direct result of the unconscious effect our attitudes are in creating in the structures on which they impinge.

**

This, I find a helpful perspective from which to consider the (partly self-willed) end of Western Civilization, and its consequences. 

We may find ourselves interpreting much of what has-happened, and (presumably) will-happen in terms of our 'bad luck' in living here and now, and with such evil rulers. But the fact is that while our attitudes and choices affect our own lives, they also affect others - otherwise they would be merely subjective. 

And the flip-side of the power of our own good choices to benefit the 'collective' situation is that we ourselves are inevitably part of 'the collective' - indeed, typically we are far more collective in our attitudes and choices than we recognize. (as with such phenomena as RUP - Residual Unresolved Positivism; or R.U. Leftism).  

So when we ourselves become targets of environmentally destructive Climate Change politics, or antiracism and the transagenda, or (maybe soon) find ourselves embroiled in World War Three - there are two aspects to the situation: inner and outer; individual and collective. 

Individually, it is usual that some of our own attitudes are supportive of exactly that which is being-deplored. Typically, we support some 'principle' (or institution) that, further down the line, leads to consequences we don't like.

For instance, we act in ways that support agencies, charities, corporations, political groupings etc, who pursue net-evil goals, harm human beings and the natural world, and encourage people to reject salvation and choose their own damnation.  

Therefore; collectively, we have, by our individual attitudes and habits, earned a share of the adversity that falls upon whole communities from economic collapse, totalitarianism, and war. 

This should not be understood as an excuse for fatalism; because we are (if we choose) individuals with a capacity for positive spiritual influence of a general nature - beyond ourselves, beyond our minds. 

But conversely, as part of the same set-up; we are all somewhat responsible for evils of the collectives of which we are part. 

We can and should repent our complicity in evil, but repentance is not reform. 

We may know and reject evil; yet we cannot cease from doing evils; including to the non-human world of beings (whose agency and capacity for communication we typically deny). 

Therefore we should not be surprised when this living, conscious, purposive world of beings - who are as mixed in their nature and motivations as are we - try to 'tell' us ('communicating, sometimes, by various adverse occurrences) that they dislike what we are doing to them; that they react-against us,